The last few classes of Barbara Close’s workshop in November were spent learning gold leaf gilding on an intricate illuminated letter. We transferred found fancy artwork to our papers and added the color and gold leaf. I found this pattern on the Internet and it became my project.

People have wondered how to get my prints, calligraphy book, videos of my work, and the iPhone apps I created on how to do calligraphy. I have set up this one page to display all the links to those resources.

This page will move down as more posts are added, so I made it a menu link at top so it will be easy to find.

I’m taking Barbra Close’s newest workshop series, and she’s starting us off with brushwork. Following are a couple of projects I completed. The orange lettering is from a class handout containing five quotes and we instructed to choose one and make one word larger for emphasis. This is my second attempt at the quote. The tool I used is below – I’m very, very impressed with the pen’s ability to do small detail work. You can tell the size of the work by the pen.

I’ve let my Copperplate calligraphy go for quite a while. I started practicing again, using the excellent Vitolo PDF handout from online (iampeth.com – “video workshop handout” link). You can compare the two to see I’ve still got a way to go. I practiced the basic forms over and over, then put them together to form letters. Later I did more letters, connecting the same letter together to try for consistency in form. Very difficult to do.

I collected these quotes from handouts given by various calligraphy teachers, from books, magazines, and other sources over the years. Each quote offers food for thought, and helps expand our understanding of our art. Continue reading →

I received a 2-DVD calligraphy set by Denis Brown called Italic Rhythm. It was beautifully filmed, edited, narrated, and demonstrated by Denis. He also supplied the music and designed all the printed work – the box and printouts.

Italic Rhythm 2-CD Set by Denis Brown (posted with permission from Denis Brown)

I entered my handmade calligraphy flag book in the OC Fair this year. I wanted to enter the illuminated manuscript (of the post below), but it wasn’t ready by the time the entry date. So I entered the flag book at the fair and entered the illuminated manuscript in the Muzeo exhibit in Anaheim. The flag book came away with Honorable Mention among the entries. I hope to enter the illuminated manuscript into the OC Fair next year.

I visited the OC Fair to look at the offerings. The only items of calligraphy were my small flag book (unfortunately positioned to make the calligraphy very hard to read, and it was cramped among the offerings), and a larger framed work by Lee Garigmeyer in Celtic lettering, complete with painted ship in the lower right corner and fancy scrollwork on the left side. It received 2nd place.

It was clear that the artwork I’ve seen among members of calligraphy guilds would give this guy a run for his money. If you are in the Orange County, CA, area, I encourage you to enter a work. I will try to enter as many pieces as I can next year. Let’s fill a table with calligraphy over there and show the public that calligraphy is alive and well!

I’m starting on my first illuminated manuscript. I settled on the two verses for the 16 x 20″ piece, and the arrangement of the words. Next, I needed to work on the color and decorations. Here is one of my color samples, after determining the sizes of the letters:

illuminated ms color test

On the left are several ideas for border treatments, but I don’t think I’m going to be using any of them. I’m starting the guilding of the piece today, then on to the lettering. I’ll use Instacoll and gold leaf (patent gold) I’ll post updates when I get further along.

Update: After starting the lettering and adding the gold leaf, I let it all dry. The next day I started the rest of the lettering — and smeared the last word of the third line, brushing my finger to the right. Start over!

My wedding anniversary and Mother’s Day both fell on the same day this year — May 11, 2014. I used the double occasion to practice offhand flourishing around the lettering I that learned in this year’s Letters CA class with Carl Rohrs. Both cards were 8.5″ width by 5.5″ high. I used Fiesta Red ink from Private Reserve on speckled Strathmore Artagain 60lb. drawing paper. I used a Brause nib for the larger lettering and pointed pen for the Copperplate lettering, date, and flourishing. I also added a few gold accents with a Sakura Gelly Roll gel pen. If you compare the offhand flourishing of the two pieces closely, you’ll see I used the same shapes in various configurations. They are part of my practiced repertoire. Continue reading →

This calligraphy conference was held February 2014. I was a student in Carl Rohrs’s class (my work in two of the styles, folded pen and pointed brush pen, are shown in the photos). Below is a report on my class experience.

A class walk-through was held on the third morning of this 4-day conference, and I shot several photos of unfinished student work in each room. It was nice to see Massimo Polello and Jake Weidmann as teachers this year.

Massimo and Lisa Englebrecht did a live collaboration, taking turns at a large (maybe 3′ square) board while we all watched. (The result was auctioned off at the conference for about $80.) Continue reading →

I had fun designing this Valentine’s Day card for my wife. I had been practicing Copperplate calligraphy, getting ready for a new calligraphy how-to video app, and decided to do more modern-style lettering to loosen up This was the result. Looks great tipped against the vase of roses I got her.

I had a great two “Uncialicious” classes with Jane Shibata, who taught several varieties of the Uncial lettering style to our monthly Orange County Society for Calligraphy members. Here are several in-class work and homework projects. Continue reading →

When you make a thick (“shaded”) Copperplate downstroke, don’t you hate it when they are rounded at the top and not square? I made a video showing how the flat top is made. I show both stroke tops so you can see the difference:

Sometimes we would like to get more information about our hobby (or livelihood). I remember back when I started in calligraphy (which was on or not long after 1972, based on the 20th Edition Speedball Handbook copyright, one of my first books), we had few resources; no Internet; there were no discussion groups or YouTube videos, few classes, and certainly no TV shows devoted to calligraphy. The Internet has come a long way to give us articles to read on our favorite topics. Google has a browser tool that will sift through the information it has gathered from around the world for items related to your subject, then sends it to your email box. Continue reading →

Barbara Close presented her students with this wonderful certificate, which started out as a blank piece of paper. She gave it to her students who had taken all four of her classes throughout the year.

She used the pointed pen, her favorite tool, and a folded ruling pen for the names, lines and illustration. Colors look like navy blue and sepia. Gold powder (barely visible on this scan) was dropped into each letter of the name before the gouache could dry.

I was inspired to create this flag book from the directions in the book, Making Handmade Books, by Alisa Golden, and from my calligraphy workshop series by Barbara Close. Our class did all the paper work, smearing acrylic paint on heavy paper in creative (and messy) ways. While the rest of the class followed the steps to bind their books with thread and needle, I used my pages to create this flag book. All the text are quotes from the Bible on prayer promises.

In the past, I let my spiritual side lead me and waited for inspiration to strike before I started on a calligraphy project. But that way was hit-and-miss, and led to long stretches of time between projects. Now that I’m putting my design training to use, I’m finding that the ideas come more quickly. In this post, I’m going to show you a process I’ve used recently. Continue reading →

As soon as we finished singing this song in church this morning, I was inspired with the design and jotted it down in my notes, then came home and created it. All the designs were hand drawn/written with parallel pens and automatic pen, then scanned into Photoshop and the color added.

I put my new spiral guideline sheets into practice with this piece. The red text is from The Hobbit, featuring the poem, “Roads go ever ever on,” and the black text is a poem from the Lord of the Rings, “The Road goes ever on and on.” The complete text of both is included. I”m thrilled that I got every word of each to fit! Continue reading →

I created a series of circular and spiral guidelines in Adobe Illustrator to help me with my calligraphy work. Click on the link above to download the PDF of several pages of these guides. Continue reading →

I created this after a friend asked for the Ten Commandments for his wall. I was challenged to figure out a way to list them in a visually appealing way. Originally I had listed the commandments in neat blocks, one under the other, in two columns, but it wasn’t visually interesting. Then I had the idea of doing it this way. Continue reading →

When my younger brother got married earlier this year, I asked him to send me his wedding vows so I can create them as a calligraphy project. He emailed me two vows, one spoken by the bride and the other spoken by the groom. I put them aside, not knowing how I wanted to execute the design yet.

Then in Barbara Close’s Uncial/Gothic workshop, she gave a homework assignment that I thought would be perfect for the vows. The assignment was to cut out around the letters on a page, with some text written underneath. In my case, I used the first word of the vow, Rebecca, and the vows under the name. Here was my assignment: Continue reading →

Sometimes people from outside the U.S. would like to know how they can get calligraphy supplies in their own country. So I thought I would do a search to find calligraphy sites around the world. The following is only a small sample of sites available. Only a few are stores. If you find yourself belonging to one of these language groups and are looking for a store in your country, contact the people at the site and see if they can direct you to where they pick up their supplies. If you are outside the U.S. and know of a store near you stocking calligraphy supplies, please give the store’s location (city, country) and contact information, such as an email. (This is not meant to be an exhaustive listing of all calligraphy sites in these areas. This is only a sampling.) Continue reading →

To make guidelines easily in Microsoft Word (and similar text programs):

1. Open a new page and set the margins all around so they are narrow, like .5″.
2. Hold down the Shift key and the Underline key and “draw” a line all the way across.
3. Highlight the line by clicking in the left margin next to it and choose a type size of 8pt.
4. Copy and paste the line over and over, one underneath the other.

Steve’s Etsy Shop

Spiritual Calligraphy book

See God’s Word glorified in these 16 passages from the Gospel of Mark, each one beautifully illustrated with stunning calligraphy paired with an insightful meditation. Full color throughout. Also includes information and photos about the calligrapher’s tools used throughout the book.
Get the book | See the video